Across the Zodiac eBook

“Are you so frightened, child?” I asked.
“I have been through many subterranean passages,
though none so long and dark as this. But you
see our lamp lights up not only the boat but the whole
vault around and before us, and there can be no danger
whatever.”

“I am frightened, though,” she said, “I
cannot help it. I never saw anything of the kind
before; and the darkness behind and before us, and
the black water on either side, do make me shiver.”

“Stop!” I called to the boatman.

“Now, Eveena,” I said, “I do not
care to persist in this journey if it really distresses
you. I wished to see so wonderful a work of engineering;
but, after all, I have been in a much uglier and more
wonderful place, and I can see nothing here stranger
than when I was rowed for three-quarters of a mile
on the river in the Mammoth Cave. In any case
I shall see little but a continuation of what I see
already; so if you cannot bear it, we will go back.”

By this time Esmo, who had been in the bows, had joined
us, wishing to know why I had stopped the boat.

“This child,” I said, “is not used
to travelling, and the tunnel frightens her; so that
I think, after all, we had better take the usual course
across the mountains.”

“Nonsense!” he answered. “There
is no danger here; less probably than in an ordinary
drive, certainly less than in a balloon. Don’t
spoil her, my friend. If you begin by yielding
to so silly a caprice as this, you will end by breaking
her heart before the two years are out.”

“Do go on,” whispered Eveena. “I
was very silly; I am not so frightened now, and if
you will hold me fast, I will not misbehave again.”

Esmo had taken the matter out of my hands, desiring
the boatman to proceed; and though I sympathised with
my bride’s feminine terror much more than her
father appeared to do, I was selfishly anxious, in
spite of my declaration that there could be no novelty
in this tunnel, to see one thing certainly original—­the
means by which so narrow and so long a passage could
be efficiently ventilated. The least I could do,
however, was to appease Eveena’s fear before
turning my attention to the objects of my own curiosity.
The presence of physical strength, which seemed to
her superhuman, produced upon her nerves the quieting
effect which, however irrationally, great bodily force
always exercises over women; partly, perhaps, from
the awe it seems to inspire, partly from a yet more
unreasonable but instinctive reliance on its protection
even in dangers against which it is obviously unavailing.

Presently a current of air, distinctly warmer than
that of the tunnel, which had been gradually increasing
in force for some minutes, became so powerful that
I could no longer suppose it accidental. Kevima
being near us, I asked him what it meant.

“Ventilation,” he answered. “The
air in these tunnels would be foul and stagnant, perhaps
unbreathable, if we did not drive a constant current
of air through them. You did not notice, a few
yards from the entrance, a wheel which drives a large
fan. One of these is placed at every half mile,
and drives on the air from one end of the tunnel to
the other. They are reversed twice in a zyda,
so that they may create no constant counter-current
outside.”